In 1989 I had occasion to enter this theater when a client of mine was proposing to use it for a retail location. The seats had been removed but the deco interior was intact. A carbon arc projector was sitting on the main floor and the original popcorn machine was still in the lobby. The main theater is entered through an adjoining long narrow building and seems to be housed in a building considerably older than the theater.

No one has mentioned that the Ritz was unique in that it served the African-American community in Akron.It was refered to in the 1950s derogitory term as a “colored theater”.I do not know if it specialized in the Black produced films available at the time but I would speculate that it did.Anyone with memories?

There is some sort of confusion here.I attended the Rialto as a child and it was located in East Akron just off Market Street across from the Goodyear Auditorium. It was a larger neiborhood theater which closed in the early 50s and has been used as the URW union hall for the past 50 years.

The Art theater was origialy a second run movie house called the Dayton so named because it was at the corner of Cuyahoga Falls Ave and Dayton Ave.This theater probably dates from the twenties being in a “rubber boom town” comercial block of that era between Akron and Cuyahoga Falls.There was some ownership connection with the Royal theater on Johnson St since they ran a duel ad in the newspaper.